
How governments are using science fiction to predict potential threats
Apr 11, 2023 11:19 am UTC| Insights & Views
From high-tech fighting machines to supercomputers and killer robots, science fiction has a lot to say about war. You might be surprised to learn that some governments (including the UK and France) are now turning their...
The rich are pouring millions into life extension research – but does it have any ethical value?
Apr 11, 2023 11:12 am UTC| Health Insights & Views
Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, recently invested US$180 million into Retro Biosciences a company seeking to extend human lifespans by ten healthy years. One way it plans to achieve this is by rejuvenating...

Apr 11, 2023 11:11 am UTC| Insights & Views
Would-be physicians are often told that a winning medical school application requires stories about observing clinical care. Applicants quests to get clinical experiences through, for example, physician shadowing, global...

Why are the poor shunned? The reasons are complicated
Apr 11, 2023 11:11 am UTC| Insights & Views
In a study of 19th century ideas of poverty, the German historian Beate Althammer observes a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, there existed a deep-rooted tradition of ascribing to the poor a special proximity to God. As...

Victim or victor? How the Easter story still resonates today
Apr 10, 2023 16:18 pm UTC| Insights & Views
At a March 2023 public talk, journalist Greg Sheridan argued that 40 years ago, the press was friendly to church leaders. Then, it became neutral, and now it is hostile. Sheridan is not alone in holding this...
Apr 10, 2023 16:16 pm UTC| Insights & Views
The detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia on espionage charges marks an unusual throwback to the old Soviet tactics for handling foreign correspondents. Authorities in Vladimir Putins...
Ukraine war: the lessons from the Northern Ireland peace process
Apr 10, 2023 16:15 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
As the French and Chinese presidents, Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping, were discussing the need for more constructive international engagement to end the war in Ukraine, it emerged this week that Ukraine, too, was open to...